Athletes work hard to prepare and perform successfully throughout a competitive season or for major events. Unfortunately, many ignore or forget the performance benefits gained through including recovery strategies within their daily training programs. Indeed there is a tendency for many athletes to limit the use of recovery techniques to times when they are ill or injured. Yet recovery strategies have far more benefits for athletes than merely as tools to assist with rehabilitation or recuperation.
Recovery is one of the basic principles of training methodology (Rushall & Pyke, 1990) and it has two primary roles: The first concerns monitoring the athlete's adaptation to training and stress so that appropriate recovery strategies can be determined. The second relates to the selection of specific recovery techniques and strategies to minimize any residual fatigue from training and competing.
The responsible athlete will also monitor training adaptations through regular recordings in a training diary or log book. Maintaining a daily record is an essential training tool for all athletes as it enables them to learn how to evaluate their stress levels and their adaptive responses. Learning to recognize “how they feel” is one of the most important skills any athlete can acquire. Recordings of the quality of sleep, morning rest rate and morning body weight, and a daily rating of fatigue levels are four critical markers that should be recorded regularly by athletes.
Recovery Strategies: Management
There are four generic types of training and competition fatigue (Calder, 2003). There are Metabolic Fatigue (energy stores); Neural Fatigue of either or both the peripheral nervous system (localized force production) and central nervous system (drive/motivation) Psychological Fatigue (emotional and social stress factors); and Environmental Fatigue (climate and travel).
A good coach understands not only what is being stimulated through prescribed training sessions, but also what is being fatigued. The challenge is to recognize the type of fatigue and then select specific strategies to reduce and minimize this fatigue as soon as possible after the training or performance situation. There are three major specialty areas to include when designing appropriate recovery strategies for an athlete's training program.
Nutrition: Fluid and Fuel for Recovery
The most important nutritional consideration for recovery relate to fluid and fuel replacement strategies (Burke, 2000). Monitoring fluid loss so that it is kept to a minimum is essential. A bodyweight loss of two percent or more during exercise will result in a reduction in aerobic output. If an athlete becomes excessively dehydrated, not only can this be dangerous and lead to overheating their aerobic capacity can be reduced by up to six-percent.
Adequate supplies of glycogen in the muscle and in the liver are needed to support the energy demands and promote recovery for the next training session. Athletes can minimize the effects of metabolic fatigue by starting each session with their fuel tanks full. They can top-up during the event with sports drinks and take other carbohydrate and protein foods. Small amounts of protein taken with carbohydrates before, during, and after hard training, are also recommended to help minimize muscle protein breakdown as a result of heavy workloads (Tarnopolsky, 2000).
Nutritional supplements should be used with caution and sound scientific advice. Many coaches and athletes are pressured to use supplements and new products and it is often difficult to source reliable evidence-based information about what is appropriate and safe to use. A useful website for advice on this area is www.ais.org.au/nutrition
Physical Therapies
A wide variety of activities and therapies are used to assist with recovery from training fatigue. Unfortunately, many recovery techniques popular with athletes and coaches have not been extensively investigated by scientists so coaches and athletes often rely on anecdotal information about what is best to use. The following list is an indication of some of the most commonly used recovery techniques.
Rest: Passive Rest
Passive rest, particularly in the form of sleep, is an area that is not well understood by either coaches or athletes. Sleep is probably the most important form of recovery an athlete can have. A good night's sleep of seven to nine hours provides invaluable adaptation time for adult individuals to adjust to the physical, neurological, immunological and emotional stressors that they experience during the day. An adolescent experiencing heavy training and a growth spurt may need up to ten hours a night and athletes who are sick often need more sleep as a part of recuperation. However, too much sleep can be detrimental to performance as it can slow down the central nervous system and lead to increased levels of melatonin that can leave the athlete feeling slow and lethargic.
Rest: Active Rest
Active rest is much undervalued by athletes. The end of the loading component of the training session is an ideal time to introduce active recovery activities, although active rest strategies can also be interspersed easily throughout the session (i.e., sets and reps). Activities can be selected to fulfill several tasks. They can either help to recover the physiological state of the athlete (light jog, walk, swim or cycle to recover the lactate system), recover neural fatigue (light jostling/shaking of muscle groups), or used as a means of psychological and emotional restoration (light but different activities).
Cross-training can also be used as a form of active rest provided the work intensities are modest (light aerobic) and the exercise undertaken are different to those normally performed in training, e.g., pool work after a game. Rest days are essential. Ideally at least one day per week should be a non-training day. This allows time for physical and psychological recovery as well as time for other interests and personal and family relationships.
Hydrotherapies
A wide range of hydrotherapies have been in use restoratively for several thousand years. Spas, pools, steam rooms, cold pools, and contrast temperature protocols were used by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
One of the few published articles on the effectiveness of hydrotherapies comes from research with nationally ranked Finnish track and field athletes (Vitasalo et al., 1995). Researchers demonstrated that underwater massaging (using the jets in a spa) following plyometrics training helped athletes to maintain leg-explosiveness on the following day. In contrast, passive rest after such training resulted in a significant reduction in leg power.
The protocols used by the Finnish researchers were very similar to those used by the ancient Romans. Essentially, this routine involves first having a shower, followed by a spa (39 to 40° C.) for three minutes and then a cold shower or a plunge into a cold pool (10 to 15° C.) for 30 to 60 seconds. Warm immersion produces vasodilation of the peripheral circulation and the cold immersion encourages vasoconstriction. Three to five sets of this protocol producing rapid vasodilation and vasoconstriction will accelerate blood flow.
A contrast temperature following the same protocol as outlined above, was used by researchers from the University of Canberra in 1996 to measure lactate recovery in high-performance hockey players after a series of Wingate tests (Sanders, 1996). Results indicated that lactate levels were recovered equally fast by using either the contrast water immersion protocol or the active recovery protocol. Lactate recovery following passive rest was significantly slower.
Showering within five to ten minutes at the end of a training session is a good way to accelerate recovery of both lactates and peripheral neural fatigue. Contrasting temperatures can be achieved with a shower and bath at home or the use of a small paddling pool or tub for cold immersion.
Sports Massage
Many claims are made about the benefits of sports massage and numerous research studies examining these claims have been undertaken over the last 15-20 years. Despite this there is not much evidence-based science to substantiate many claims that are made about the benefits of massage (Calder, 1990). What little information that does exist provides evidence for increased muscle and skin temperatures, leads to a relaxation response as demonstrated by a reduction in resting heart rates, blood pressure and a decrease in excitability of the motor-neuron pool. Improved mood states and feelings of well-being have been recorded in several studies and many athletes will use massage as both a means of relaxing physically and psychologically.
Acupuncture and Acupressure
Acupressure is often performed as an adjunct to sports massage but acupuncture requires more extensive qualifications and is less accessible and more expensive than massage. Both acupressure and acupuncture focus on applying pressure or stimulus to specific points located on 14 meridians (line patterns) on the body. http://smscsqlx.sasktelwebhosting.com/services/exphys/recoverystrategies.pdf
The products outlined in this application fit the unmet need for aids to improve “active rest” performance as well as actual performance during the sports activity.